


An armour of pearl

by Itsamess



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Set right after 8x02, Theon needs to be protected, Theon-centric, really - Freeform, the only joy is in his name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 16:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsamess/pseuds/Itsamess
Summary: "Don't die, not so far from the sea"Yara asked you only one thing and you still managed to disappoint her. You left the Iron Islands - safe from the White Walkers, just like any other island - to go back to Winterfell and die, thousands of miles from any puddle of water that is not frozen. Now your sister's prayer is tireless undertow that sloshes in the depths of your mind---Theon, Sansa and the night before the massacre





	An armour of pearl

_Don't die so far from the sea._

_Don't die so far from the sea._

_Don't die, not so far from the sea_

Yara asked you only one thing and you still managed to disappoint her. You left the Iron Islands - safe from the White Walkers, just like any other island - to go back to Winterfell and die, thousands of miles from any puddle of water that is not frozen. Now your sister's prayer is tireless undertow that sloshes in the depths of your mind.  
   
But you have made your decision.  
You won't back off, not this time.  
You will fight til the end - like the heroes in the ballads - against an enemy that you have never even seen.  
You would like to call it courage, but the truth is that it's a matter of atonement.  
You still haven't paid for all of your mistakes. Considering their number, it's very likely you will die before you have the chance to settle this debt.  
After all, you were born a Greyjoy, not a Lannister.

\---

It's strange to come back.  
You walk through the castle hallways and wonder how many more masks you will wear getting through the doors of Winterfell. 

First, you have been the Hostage, the son of a rebel lord, teared from his family just to be a useful leverage.  
(What a fool Ned Stark to think that your father cared about you. You would almost laugh, if you didn't find it so depressing).

Then, the Usurper. A barbarian willing to burn his own brothers to hoist his foreign banners. A golden kraken strangling the wolf that suckled it.

Lastly Reek. A wreck with no will whatsoever. You are still trying to forget that part of your life, but Ramsay's cruel laugh soaks your nightmares.

This is the only time you are in Winterfell as yourself. Theon, just Theon. You don't represent the Iron Islands, you are not a prince, nor a lord. You are just a man ready to fight for a good cause and - most likely - die for it. You don't have any hope to come back home.  
Also because home is such an empty word for you. 

\---

You walk through the door with your head up.  
All this bravado doesn't suit you, and in front of you there are the heirs of noble houses and legendary queens, heroes and knights.  
You barely notice them. You're eyes are only for her 

Sansa runs into your arms and for a moment you are ten years old and you have just got back from a riding lesson with a branch of mistletoe for her.  
A whole life has passed, but if you close your eyes you can still see her, bent over the table, using needle and thread to sew its ivory berries one above the other. She used to create such a long necklace of them and every time she proudly showed it to you asking "They look like pearls, don't they?" 

As a matter of fact, they were quite similar, but of course you couldn't give her that satisfaction: after all, she was a girl, as well as the daughter of the man who had kidnapped you. So every time you shrugged and replied: "Real pearls are bigger and shinier than these. You would know it, if you had been by the sea even once" 

No wonder Sansa had quit showing you her mistletoe's necklaces.  
Now she has grown up. She is not interested in toys anymore. She is the lady of Winterfell and she could have you killed just with a snap of her fingers, but for some reason she has decided to forgive you.  
It's not the time to point out that you don't deserve it.  
You hold her tight and your hug is desperate as the one between two shipwrecked.

\---

"You can stay here, tonight"  
Sansa's voice is firm, but she still can't look you in the eyes.  
You can't blame her: neither you can bear the sight of your face in the mirror, eight days a week.

"I don't think it's appropriate, my lady. Also, we must face a long battle and I don't want to waste your t-"

"Theon"  
Sansa directly stares at you. She wants to make sure you are really listening. She repeats the same words, but their order has changed and her voice is pleading.  
"Can you stay here, tonight?"

You nod, even though you don't understand why she is asking you, and not a member of her family, or a friend. You surely don't belong in any of the two categories: in your teenage years, you have fantasized too often about her to fit in the former, and to this day you have disappointed her too often to fit in the latter.  
Maybe she just want to have you there because she is scared to be lonely and you are the first person at hand.

You shrug. "At least let me get my sword. I don't have any weapon on me and I couldn't protect you, if the White Walkers broke into the castle" 

You shouldn't have said that. As soon as you pronounce these words, Sansa's expression changes to a mask of rage and contempt and dismay.  
"That's why you think I want you here?" she replies "To be protected?"

"I thought-”

"You thought I needed a man, that's what you thought. That I couldn't protect myself"  
Sansa walks towards the bed and sticks a hand under the pillow. She pulls out an obsidian shard as long as her forearm and as sharp as her mind. The dragon glass reflects the moonlight.  
"Everybody thinks I am still the foolish and coward child I was, but I've changed. I hoped that you, of all people, had seen it" 

She sits on the bed, the obsidian shard in her lap. You watch her absent-mindedly caressing its tip. Ramsay too liked to hadle weapon with this lecherous carelessness, caressing them as if they were the warm thighs of a woman.  
You wonder if Sansa is thinking about him. You wonder if she has ever stopped.

Memories come back to the surface like corks and for a moment you can still hear her screaming while Ramsay forces himself on her. You see her tear-stained face and her eyes, staring at you, begging to save her. 

"Theon?' Sansa calls you. She is still sit on the bed, but she is not playing with the obsidian shard anymore.  
She is sticking it through her heart.  
A crimson anemone is spilling from her chest and Sansa's face is a mask of agony but her scream is soundless like she was shouting underwater.  
In the darkness, also her hair has the same shiny color of blood and they stream down her cheeks and oh my Gods how could you let someone do this again-

You blink.  
It's just red hair.  
The obsidian shard must be simply under her pillow.

"Theon, it's alright. I'm not mad at you"  
Sansa gently caresses your face, like a mother would.  
You didn't realize it, but you were crying, for a change.  
"I haven't been mad at you for a long time" she whispers and maybe if she repeats it a thousand times more you will believe her. 

You two sit on the bed. Sansa tells you about that obnoxious queen of dragons who thinks she rightfully owns everything, from the Iron Throne to the biggest room of the castle, to Jon's heart.  
You tell her about Yara, skipping all the parts where you are a coward and you leave your sister to die and the point where the Iron Men beat the hell out of you, so your story is pretty short.  
"And here we are" you finish, just to say something.

"Back home" she says, smiling. 

"Yeah"

"But it never felt like home to you, did it?"

You can't lie to her. You shake your head.  
"No. I've always been a... guest, in this castle"  
In other circumstances, you would use a different word - something like "hostage" - but you don't want to talk about the bad blood.  
"But you have to believe, Sansa... Despite all I've said and done against your family... I've been happy, here"

"We can still be happy" she replies.  
You desperately need to believe her, but you can't help but thinking that you have been broken at the same point, but you haven't healed the same way.  
Sansa walked through fire and she came back strengthened, a blade tempered by the flame.  
You walked through fire and only got burned.

"This could still be your home, if you want" she says taking your hand. Hers is hot and alive. And real. "I'll talk to Jon. He may be Protector of the North, but this castle is as much his as mine. If he can bring here a southern blondie, I can have you back. It wouldn't be a problem... You could even stay in your old room."

Your eyes fill with tears. You know all too well you won't be able to accept.  
"I won't survive the battle" you whisper. You are not talking to Sansa anymore. You are reminding yourself.

"I didn't know you made prophecies too".  
Sansa is trying to crack a joke, but she's too smart to ignore the truth: you came here to fight, not to actually _win_. 

“But I'm not afraid, anyway” you lie “I'm not afraid of dying”

Sansa's hands cup your face. It would look like the moment before a kiss, except for the fact that she despises you and you never stood a chance anyway.  
"Listen to me" she says, her voice trembling with anger “Tomorrow you'll _fight_ and you'll _do your best_ and you'll put into practice our father's teaching and you'll _be smart_ and you'll _survive_. Did you hear me? You'll survive this too. We have been through worse"

That's when you know: Sansa _needs_ you to survive. She needs to believe your escaping from Ramsay wasn't all vain. She needs to know there's still hope for those like you, broken and burned and incomplete.

“Sansa, I-”

“I know" she answers before letting you finish "Me too”

\---

You both lie on her bed in the most innocent way possible - you look like the married couples that decide to be buried together, one beside the other. Your arms barely touch.

You watch her closing her eyes, but you know well Sansa won't fall asleep tonight. Neither of you will. Not with the White Walkers at Winterfell gates, not with a couple of dragons in the crypts.

You could try counting your mistakes to fall asleep. You're pretty sure you would pass out before getting to your ludicrous siege of Winterfell, when you had tried winning the affection of a father who had never loved you, betraying the memory of the one who had. 

“I have always hated the nights before the battle” Sansa is saying "When I was a child I used to have such horrible nightmares about my father... I couldn't even talk about them”

”Did you dream about his death?”

Sansa shakes her head. “On the contrary, I used to dream he survived. In my nightmares, he left my family again and came back one year later with another woman's bastard son”

“Come on, Jon is not that bad” you say smiling.

She ignores the comment: “That's why I used to give him a present, before every battle. It could be anything, an arrowhead, a polished stone... I hope he would have reminded him of home.” Sansa tiredly runs her hand across her face, and says: “And my spell used to work, because he always came back to us.”

There's no spell, of course.  
Regardless of her hair's color, Sansa is not the Red Woman and Ned Stark always decided to come home after the battle because he loved his family more than his own life.

"And in case he hadn't come back" Sansa continues "in case he had fell in battle, at least he would have had a piece of home. His soul, if not his body, would have known to belong somewhere”

You never have such a place. Tomorrow on your dead body they won't find any effigy, any crest, because you've always been too Greyjoy to become a Stark and too Stark to go back being a Greyjoy. Your corpse will end up in a mass grave. No one will mourn your death, also because no one will notice. 

"... thought about a spell for you, you know?"  
While you were drowning in your self-loathing spirals, Sansa had continued to talk about the past. The room is even darker than before.  
"But of course I couldn't give you anything from the North, because even then I knew it didn't feel like home to you. That's why I decided to use the pearls”

“The pearls?” you stutter, confused

“Well, actually they're weren't real pearls, they were mistletoe berries. But seen from the distance they really looked like pearls, don't you agree?”

It's the same question she used to ask you as a child.  
Now you'll give her a different answer.  
“Yes, I do... They look very similar indeed"

“I think so too” she smiles "That's why I used to collect hundreds of them and sew them all together. I wanted to create a sort of chain mail for you, for the moment you would have gone into battle. An armour of pearl, can you imagine it? It was such a stupid idea, but I didn't want you to die without a piece of the sea with you, even if it was just pretend.”

Tears sting in the corners of your eyes.  
You got it all wrong, once again..  
“When I told her that I wanted to fight in the North, Yara asked me just one thing" you confess "She asked me not to die so far from the sea"

"And you won't die"  
Sansa puts her hands around her throat.  
If this was one of your nightmares, she would press them hard and she would strangle herself right in front of you, but this is reality and she just takes off the necklace she was wearing.  
It's a string of pearls. Real pearls, this time.  
She puts the necklace in your pocket.  
"Not so far from the sea, at least”

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, so I am deeply sorry for every mistake.  
> I just wanted to write about these two because I love them with all my heart.


End file.
